“Hey, red mage, you’re gonna need to help the healer out for this.”

Excuse me?! was the initial thought. I stared at the tank, a burly shirtless Hrothgar with a gunblade toted over one shoulder. The second damage-dealer, a ninja or a dancer or something – it didn’t really matter, as long as they did their job right – stood there and said nothing. The healer was mum, too.
This was not my job. This was absolutely not the job of a red mage. I had a single healing spell and a single revive spell, and that was it. That was the extent of my ability to ‘help the healer heal’.

There wasn’t time to argue, though. The Hrothgar didn’t wait for a response. He hurled himself right up to the giant angry dragon perched in the middle of the snowy hellscape of a field.

For roughly five minutes, everything went fine. Mostly. As fine as these things tended to go, anyway. The living snowglobe that was The Burn was a mass of indecipherable white around us, but everything else moved clear as crystal, if only because everyone else was stark and dark against it. I sent a few heals here and there – stupid healer, do your job – but it was nothing intolerable. For a moment, I thought that everything would be fine and the healer would pull themselves up.

Then, I noticed the tank – stupid white Hrothgar – wasn’t looking so hot. He wheezed and heaved between movements, visibly aching.

After that, I noticed that the healer was down. How in the heck?! Is it really so hard to stay out direct line of fire?!

I think I let out a hysterical laugh, thin lalafellian voice ripping the sky. “Scrap to you all, I’m the healer now!”

I got the healer back up. I then promptly gave them a solid heal of my own. Then I healed the tank, just to make sure that everything was on the up-and-up. I couldn’t keep this up for long; I wasn’t made for this sort of extended drain.

The other damage-dealer then decided that it was a good time to fall. Nice of them, really. The healer had that one handled, though, finally, but then the tank fell and that was on me to fix.

It was a dance of staying just out of the path of danger while also making sure three toddlers didn’t die. It was as if they were doing their utmost best to get as many wounds as possible, healer included.

In the end, we pulled it off. The dragon wailed and fell, death throes echoing in to the midday sky. But only because I got it done.

The other three stumbled off and away without so much as a nod of thanks. No gratitude; no commendations.

But the swell of pride makes it the most cherished of memories.



(Gaelicap, please)